


Pictures to Prove It

by beedekka



Category: Tango & Cash (1989)
Genre: Abduction, Action, Case Fic, M/M, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-19
Updated: 2015-12-19
Packaged: 2018-05-07 17:25:00
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,508
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5464793
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/beedekka/pseuds/beedekka
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Tango gets kidnapped by evil villains, it's up to Cash and Kiki to combine forces and get him back.  Naturally, Ray has some escape plans of his own, while Gabriel finds that working on the investigation results in more than just case-related revelations.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Pictures to Prove It

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Makioka](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Makioka/gifts).



> Happy Yuletide, Makioka! Thank you for prompting me with these guys - I hope you enjoy it :)

Coming around in the basement of some shitty industrial warehouse was never a good experience, but this time the throbbing pain from the hit to the base of his skull, and his hurt pride at getting grabbed in the first place, were being intensified by the annoyance Ray felt over the fact that Cash’s exact last words to him before they’d parted earlier that day had been, “Oh yeah, by the way, don’t do anything stupid like get kidnapped tonight so that I have to come and rescue you, because I already made other plans.”

“I’ll do my best, hot shot,” he’d replied, and they’d both laughed.

 _Well, shit. I guess between that almighty jinx, and my apparently-lacking ‘best’, we really fucked up_ those _plans._

Ray looked around him and noted the sparse décor and distinct lack of anything he could reach that might aid an escape attempt. His wrists were bound together, keeping his arms around the back of the chair he was sitting on, and his shoulders and chest were roped to the chair as well. The bonds were tight; expertly tied. He hoped that didn’t mean this was a professional job, but the ease with which he’d been ambushed, subdued and plucked out of his own apartment in broad daylight without any alarm being raised all pointed towards it. _Damn._

He squeezed his eyes closed and willed his headache to dissipate so that he could think more clearly. What was his first move? Who was likely to be behind this? He had more questions than answers, and although he was loath to fully admit it, the uppermost thought in his mind was, ‘I wonder how long it’s gonna take Cash to work out what’s going on and give me a hand here.’

 

***

 

“Gabriel?”

“Kiki, what’s up?” Cash wedged the phone receiver in between his ear and shoulder, trying to carry on gelling his hair despite the awkward presence of the handset and aerial. He caught his own eye in the mirror, mid-sweep, and winked. _Looking good._

“If you’ve got any plans for tonight you’d better cancel them. It’s Ray – I think he’s been kidnapped!”

Cash watched his own face run a speedy gamut of increasingly comical expressions. “You’re kidding me.”

“No, I am not kidding you.” 

“Yes, you _are_ kidding me and he’s right there, isn’t he? RAY,” he shouted, “this is petty even for you. Just because I made plans tonight that don’t involve y…”

“Cash, shut up!” Kiki instructed him firmly. “Ray is really not here. I got a message telling me to come to his place and when I arrived the door was unlocked and there’s no sign of him.”

“So, he went out for the evening paper and he puts a lot of faith in the neighbourhood watch; mystery solved!”

“No, there’s more than that. His desk is all turned out like someone’s gone through it, and,” her voice faltered for a split-second, “Gabe, furniture was knocked over too, like there was a struggle. You have to get over here _now_.”

The waver in her tone caught him and yanked him out of asshole mode long enough to actually consider the situation, and he took hold of the phone properly, expression in the mirror suddenly serious. “Kiki, look around you, are you sure you’re safe? No one could still be there, right? Get out of the apartment if anything seems wrong.”

“No, the place is empty now, I’m sure.”

“Did you call the precinct yet?”

“I just called you straight away.”

“Okay, okay. Don’t worry. You stay right there; I’m on my way over, and I’ll call them.”

“Hurry, Cash.”

He was already hanging up.

 

***

 

He got to Ray’s apartment before any uniformed cops or the scene examiner, and after pulling Kiki into a hug that he held a little bit longer and tighter than he really should have if he was aiming it to come across as reassuring, he quickly scanned the place over himself. To his dismay, it did look like something had happened: there was a fallen lamp on the floor in the hall, and papers strewn around like someone was searching for something. Now, if anyone went to _his_ home and found the door open and a fucking mess everywhere, they wouldn’t bat an eyelid, but Ray was fastidious – he wouldn’t leave things like this unless he wasn’t leaving of his own volition. “Kiki, how did you get the message telling you to come here?”

“On my machine. It was a guy’s voice – he said he was a cop, working with Ray, and that Ray had asked him to tell me to meet him at home.”

“You save that message?”

“Yep, and I didn’t touch anything. His office is really messed up.”

Cash made for it and stepped carefully around a chair lying on its side between the door and the front of Ray’s desk. Kiki was right – the drawers had been rifled through, their contents spread out over the desktop. He frowned down at the papers, trying to work out what they related to. They were account records, from their appearance. Ray’s personal accounts? Stocks and shares stuff? “Do you know if Ray kept up his bookwork by himself, or if he used an accountant?” he asked Kiki.

“Accountant, I think. Why?”

“Because without knowing what papers would have been here in the first place we can’t tell what might be missing. And we can’t ask Ray, so if there’s someone else who worked with these documents they could help us get a lead.” He opened the rolodex and spun it randomly. “Any idea of the name?” No such luck that Ray would have helpfully filed it under ‘A’.

Kiki shook her head. “Sorry.”

Cash leant down and peered beneath the desk. There was a gun taped to the underside. “Whoever got him didn’t grab him sitting here, or if they did it was very quick, which doesn’t fit with the fallen chair or the lamp out there.”

A knock at the apartment door hailed the arrival of the scene examiner, and Cash wasted no time in handing the place over to her. There were two things he wanted to do: hear the message that had been left for Kiki himself, and trace Ray’s accountant, and he was going to do his damnedest to do both as fast as possible.

 

***

 

The man who was apparently his captor didn’t seem to feel like saying much, which was particularly unnerving as it left the two of them staring at each other like it was some kind of ridiculous playground contest. He’d let himself into the room with Ray a few minutes ago, and so far all he’d done was regard him with a faint smile on his face, despite Ray’s efforts to engage him in conversation. Ray hadn’t been gagged, so he figured the man wasn’t averse to him talking, but his cracks about how a rough kidnapping really played havoc with his top-of-the-line tailoring, and that he was going to have to file expenses for a new shirt and tie _again_ , seemed to go down even worse than usual. Perhaps he needed to get some new material? Maybe he should have gone with the whole surprise party shtick instead…

“You know who I am, right?” he asked the impassive goon. “Whoever you’re doing this on behalf of told you I’m a cop, told you I’m high profile, didn’t they? The PD’s gonna have a lot of people chasing you down right now, so if I were you I’d be looking for a way to play this out so you don’t have to spend the next rest of your life in a little concrete room just like this one. Why don’t you tell me who you’re working for? Give this up before my buddies come and take you down.”

“Uh uh.” The man spoke for the first time, shaking his head. “I don’t think your police buddies are much of a threat to me, Mr Tango. In fact, I think they’re going to be just falling over themselves to cooperate with me, particularly since you’re _so_ important, and high profile.”

“That’s ‘Detective’ Tango,” Ray corrected him, sourly. So maybe this was a ransom job, then, or a prisoner switch deal of some kind. He wracked his brains for anyone they had in custody at the moment who could be considered enough of a big fish to warrant bargaining their way out on a cop’s life. It would likely be someone he had some sort of connection to. He couldn’t think of anyone.

The man checked his watch and Ray noticed it was the second time he’d done it. “Expecting someone?” He might have a chance to use the surprise party gag after all!

Another impassive stare in response. It was frustrating – Ray wanted some action to happen but the guy was running everything too smoothly, too controlled. That was a pain in the ass; it gave him fewer chances to force a mistake or find something to take advantage of. It seemed like his captor was just acting as a watch dog, waiting for the next phase of the plan to go into motion. Suddenly, his watch bleeped the turn of the hour, and the man stood up smartly.

_Seven o’clock? Eight? Couldn’t be any later than that._

“I’ll be right back, so don’t you go anywhere,” he told Ray, turning on his heel.

“And miss out on more of your sparkling repartee? I’ll count the seconds,” Ray called, then muttered, “asshole,” under his breath as he watched the door get closed and locked behind him. He wondered where the man was going. He’d been pretty concerned to keep an eye on the time, so maybe it was a pre-arranged meeting, or a phone call; a check in of some kind. Well, whatever… Ray wasn’t going to waste any of the time it was giving him alone, and he began fidgeting in earnest against the ropes on his wrists in case he could work them around to get the knots closer to his fingers.

He tried shaking himself free of the chair as well, but the rope around his chest and shoulders was keeping him fixed tight to the frame and it seemed like the bonds were threaded through it, not just around it. He stood up and made for the wall to try and break or dislodge it against the hard concrete; it would have been an easier task if the damn chair wasn’t metal, and while he could knock it around plenty, it stubbornly clung to his back like he was a busted tortoise.

He switched to trying to ram the door instead, succeeding in jarring every bone north of his knees and creating a dent in one panel, but not much else. The fact that it opened inward wasn’t working in his favour, and he swore loudly as the top corner of the chair frame jammed him in the back and sent a burst of pain up his spine to meet the ache that was settled at the hinge of his neck. He staggered back to the centre of the room and looked around again. He had to be smarter about this. He could already hear Cash’s voice taunting him: “They left you alone for _how_ long, and you couldn’t get out?” There was a pile of crates in one corner of the room; perhaps there was something useful inside them…

Before Ray could act on that idea, however, he heard footsteps approaching the door again. The guy was moving fast, and Ray barely had time to set himself down in his former position before the door was open and his abductor was looming over him.

“Time for a change of scenery; I’m taking you on a little trip,” he informed Ray, moving swiftly behind him. A second later, Ray felt the ropes fixing him to the chair fall loose, leaving only his wrists tied to each other. _Typical!_ If he’d known the guy was going to come back and do that, he would have saved himself the last few moments’ efforts. However, being moved somewhere else meant that he had to think fast: he had to find some way of leaving a clue so that anyone who found this place after he was gone would know that they were on the right track.

“I hope you’re not afraid of the dark.” The man moved around in front of him again and produced a cloth bag from behind his back, smiling nastily.

Great, so he was going to have his face covered for the journey, as well. That meant that either this place would be recognisable to him, or that wherever they were going was somewhere pretty important. The guy dropped the bag over his head and Ray twisted in the chair, scuffing the legs against the ground and forcing the man to focus on keeping him under control. With any luck, he wouldn’t notice Ray yanking out a cufflink and dropping it onto the floor.

His captor pulled him up, sending the chair falling sideways as he started half-dragging, half-marching him in the direction of the door, and Ray twisted and struggled more, trying to distract him from looking back and seeing the breadcrumb trail. It worked. The feeling of his shoulder banging the frame of the door on the way through, coupled with the man snarling in his ear to keep moving the whole time, told Ray that they were on their way out without him noticing anything amiss.

With his face covered Ray was manhandled blindly up a flight of stairs, and he stumbled repeatedly on the steps, hitting his shins painfully on the edges of the risers. Wincing, he wondered if he could get away with launching himself backwards and pushing them both down the stairs without breaking his own neck in the process. It was a risky plan, even for him, but before he could make the decision one way or the other they were at the top and he fell forward heavily, not anticipating the sudden flat of the landing. It turned out to be a mixed blessing: when he rolled sideways he caught a flash of the corridor around him under the hem of the bag as it rode up, and there was a door off the stairwell with a nameplate to indicate what it accessed. They weren’t in the basement of a warehouse like he’d assumed; it was a basement in an office block. He knew that because the nameplate read ‘Andersen and Shriver’ – the offices of his own accountants!

“Get up,” the kidnapper hissed at him, reaching down to yank Ray up off the ground and onto his feet once more. Then he was roughly shoved through an external door into a space which from the temperature and the echo of their steps had to be a parking garage. Sure enough, he was pulled abruptly to a stop as the man unlocked a vehicle, and then his equilibrium was rudely upended as he was shoved over and into the trunk, the heavy clunk of it closing making him flinch in the small space. Tight spaces were _not_ his favourite place to be, and his breathing involuntarily quickened along with his heartrate. The engine roared into life and he swallowed hard and tried to concentrate on mapping the directions they were taking away from the accountancy offices; he knew the streets, so he could try and follow roughly where he was going. The car took a corner in a wide swing and he felt his stomach turn over.

_Hey, Cash, you’d better be on my trail, because this is one ride I kinda want to get off now._

 

***

 

The brief stop at Kiki’s house to get the tape from her answer machine allowed Cash to hear the voice of the messenger himself, and he wasn’t surprised that he didn’t recognise it. “That doesn’t sound like anyone we work with – it’s definitely the kidnappers spinning a line to send you to Ray’s place!” He pocketed the tape to take to the station for analysis, and quickly set up call diversion on the phone line so that any further messages would ring through to the PD.

“Are you ready to go?” 

“Hold on a second, Kiki – Ray has a few things still stored here, doesn’t he? Any papers or business cards in that stuff, or anything like it?”

Kiki considered for a second. “There’s a box in the top of the closet in the spare room; I know it’s got some copies of documents that he’s put there over the years as a back-up in case anything were to happen to his apartment.”

“Bingo!” _Always organised, Ray._ Cash went straight to the bedroom. “He might not like me looking, but I only need to see something account-related with a letterhead on it. It’ll save us some time.” He wasn’t going to say it out loud to Kiki, but he was painfully aware that every minute counted in an abduction case, and he wanted to be able to swing by the accountant’s on the way to the precinct and get the ball rolling on that lead.

There were a handful of Ray’s shirts and jeans hanging on the rail in the closet; old clothes that were far more casual than the ones he tended to wear now, and Cash smiled at the sight of a faded overshirt with a frayed collar and loose buttons. He liked Ray in stuff like that – a little more relaxed, softer around the edges – it made a nice contrast to his stick-up-the-ass, professional persona. It figured that Ray would leave those clothes behind here and not keep them at his own fancy, fashionable apartment.

The box yielded a pile of documents and some photographs, and when he lifted everything out there was a Smith & Wesson 36 hidden at the bottom, too. The pictures were obviously personal, family stuff: one of Ray and Kiki together, a lot younger than they were now, and another picture of them with an older couple – _parents_ , Cash thought. _Pictures he doesn’t want to lose._

It pulled him up short, then, when he moved the pile across and a creased picture of him slipped out of it. He was grinning wide, lying back on Ray’s bed, and the humour shone in his eyes and playfully raised eyebrow. He remembered Ray taking it – a rare moment when Cash had managed to relax him into goofing around, and they were snapping stupid Polaroid shots of each other. It was early on, back when they’d just crossed the line from friends to… to whatever they were now. Cash also remembered that right after that was taken he’d grabbed the camera out of Ray’s hands and taken dick pics from three different angles; he wondered where Ray might be keeping _those_ mementos.

 _Shit, Ray. When did I become a picture you don’t wanna lose, in here with your family and your memories?_ Cash wasn’t certain he deserved that, and the realisation that he might have bigger hopes to live up to than he thought pinched at something in his chest and spurred him on to find the address he was looking for and get on Ray’s trail with even more urgency.

He was in luck that one of the top documents amongst the papers was clearly financial, and marked with a recent date and a firm’s name: Andersen & Shriver. Hurriedly shoving the papers and the pictures back into the box, Cash was about to replace it on the shelf when he hesitated and reached back in, almost as an afterthought, and pulled the little 36 out. Last time Ray had lent him that piece, it’d saved his ass; comically small as it was, Ray favoured that particular model for a reason, and Cash found himself tucking it into his boot. Even if he was only taking it for luck, it felt right.

“Kiki, I got the accountant – let’s go!”

 

***

 

Tango blinked hard against the light as the bag was pulled from over his head. When his vision cleared enough to make out his surroundings he could see he was in more luxurious quarters than last time. _Some sort of safe house perhaps?_ The room wasn’t exactly abundantly furnished, but it was clearly in an actual house rather than a warehouse or offices. There was a bed and a chair, and a window that would have given a pretty vista out onto some open land if the view hadn’t been interrupted by security bars. “I’d rate it three stars,” he told his captor. “The room’s well appointed, but the fixtures are so last season.”

“Why don’t you enjoy this fixture up close?” The man sneered at him, pushing him roughly to his knees beside a thick pipe running down the inside of the wall – carrying water around the house by the looks of it. He took out a set of handcuffs and a knife and Ray zeroed in on the blade, wisecracks forgotten as he considered the various ways the guy could be about to use it. Slitting the ropes that still bound his wrists together behind his back, and then bringing it up to sit tightly against his throat, it turned out.

“Put your hands up to either side,” the man ordered, nodding towards the pipework, and when Ray did as he was commanded, he closed one side of the cuffs on his right wrist and threaded the other side behind the pipe. Ray thought about putting up some resistance again, but the knife was sharp against his neck and once more he couldn’t guarantee his own safety out of the move. As soon as his other wrist was cuffed in, the guy stood back and admired his handiwork. There was nothing in reach of Ray, and while he could slide his arms a few feet up and down the pipe, a strong bracket screwed into the wall partway up it to hold the pipe in place prevented him from raising them above waist height.

Ray had twisted his wrists to try and hide the missing cufflink from the man’s view, but he caught the frown that marked the exact second he noticed it anyway.

“Lost something?” he demanded.

“What?” Ray played innocent.

“Cufflinks come in pairs,” the goon snarled, holding the knifepoint threateningly towards him.

“Yeah, they also tend to come off in fist fights,” Ray told him. “Have we had one of those lately?”

“You’re lucky we need you alive for the time being, because you are beginning to try my patience!”

_Who’s 'we'?_

The man left the room abruptly and Ray heard a key turn in the lock, followed a minute later by the engine of the same car that had brought him here. It pulled away from the house over what sounded like gravel, and Ray wondered if the guy was actually concerned enough about the cufflink that he was bothering to retrace their steps. _Must have pretty severe instructions not to leave any evidence behind…_ It seemed like there was a connection between his abduction and Andersen  & Shriver, and that it was one that whoever was behind this didn’t want uncovered.

 _Come on, Cash,_ he willed. _You better find that missing link before he does._

 

***

 

From the moment he flashed his badge at the front desk of Andersen & Shriver, Cash could tell that the security guard had been instructed to obstruct anyone who came in. 

“I’m afraid that neither Mr Andersen nor Mr Shiver is in the office at the moment. As you can see, it’s significantly past normal business hours,” the guard told him, pointedly indicating the clock on the wall behind the Reception.

“You know, it’s strange that you should say that, because in fact _as I could see_ when I walked through your parking garage just now, there was a beautiful New Yorker parked right in the space marked ‘Reserved for Mr Andersen’ – I like cars, I notice those kinds of things.” Cash smiled winsomely.

“Then someone must have taken advantage of his absence to misuse the director’s space. Thank you for letting me know, so that I can find out who it was straight away, Detective.”

“Why don’t I assist you?” Cash offered. “I have my police radio right down in my vehicle, and access to the registration details connected to any license plate. I’m sure we can find out who this Chrysler belongs to in no time at all.”

“Uh,” the guard stuttered. “That’s okay, I…”

“Look, let’s just cut the crap, asshole.” Cash spoke low, leaning right over the desk. “All this bullshit is _way_ above your pay grade, so why don’t you just buzz me and” – he glanced at Kiki – “my colleague here through your security door so that I can have a few minutes talking to Mr Andersen. We’re only trying to enlist his help with an investigation, and I can’t think of any reason why a fine, upstanding member of the local business community wouldn’t want to cooperate with the police in any way they can, can you?” He was running out of patience for this, but he was getting steadily more ready to rule Ray’s accountant into the case as someone who actually had something to do with his disappearance rather than someone who could shed some useful light on the paperwork.

“Detective, I’m telling you, Mr Andersen really is not in the building – he hasn’t been here all day.”

“I said I wanted to cut the crap!” Cash shouted, grabbing a fistful of the guard’s collar and pulling him up halfway over the desk to glare into his face. He caught Kiki wince in his peripheral vision and reckoned he must be doing a good job of being ‘Worse Cop’ for a change.

“I- I’m not lying; he brought his car in early this morning and instructed us to tell anyone who asked that he was unavailable. Then he went up to his office for a few minutes and left again with files upon files of papers, except he didn’t take his car. Somebody picked him up.”

“Who?”

“I don’t know!”

“Did you see them? See a car, anything?” Cash demanded.

“It was a Chevy. A black Impala. That’s all I saw, I swear.”

“Hey, Katherine,” Cash called, “do you think this guy’s holding out on us?” He looked across at her, not letting go of the guard, and watched her expression segue from a split-second of surprise to a fearsome frown.

“If he is,” she began slowly, menacingly, “then I am personally going to come back here with a selection of very rusty, yet very serrated cutting tools, and ask him some more questions while I hold his balls between the blades.”

“Ouch, and she means that, too!” Cash added. “Gotta run all metallic objects through security, right?” The guard visibly shuddered. “So, are you sure there’s nothing else you might want to tell us about Andersen, or what’s been going on here lately?”

“I- I remembered something else just now…”

“Oh, did you?”

“He was showing someone around the basement area a few days ago; he got the keys from the desk here and didn’t bring them back.”

Cash let the shirt slip from his grip and the man slowly sank down into his chair. “See, that wasn’t too hard, was it? You’ve managed to be very helpful after all. You just have to do one more thing for us: if Mr Andersen, or anyone else shows up and enquires, then please remember that _no one_ has been here questioning you, and that if you say otherwise, Katherine is just itching to play with scissors without adult supervision.”

The guard nodded vigorously, and Cash stepped away from the Reception.

“Come on, let’s move.” In a second, Cash was halfway to the stairwell door with Kiki behind him. As soon as it shut behind them, he grabbed her around the shoulders in a delighted hug.

“Gabe, what--?”

“It must be in the genes; you played it perfectly – better than Ray does, even! I think it’s because you’re a woman; no offence, but you ladies can dial up the crazy like I can’t begin to fathom. _Serrated_ blades?”

“Gee, Cash, it’s almost like I could perform for a living, huh? Now before you award me the Oscar, can we get on with finding Ray, _please?_ ”

“Yes. The basement – it must be down here.” He indicated the stairs that opened onto the landing near the door to the garage, and they hurried down them.

 

***

 

Ray spent the first few moments after the goon had driven away listening intently to the noises around him. From the length of time they’d been travelling and the type of land he could see out of the window here, he could guess that they were out towards the Canyons somewhere, but he was more interested in trying to work out who – if anyone – might be in the house with him. Okay, he didn’t know how big the place was, and there could be people simply too far away for him to hear, but the area near-by this room was _really_ quiet. Quiet enough that he was willing to risk trying to get free and doing a little poking around. If he could find a phone, this abduction had the potential to end pretty swiftly.

He tested the sturdiness of the pipe and the bracket attaching it to the wall by bracing his feet against the bottom and leaning back so that the fixture took his weight. It didn’t yield at all, so Ray changed tac and knelt down close to the wall again; he’d just have to pick the cuffs open while he was still stuck to the pipe. Bending awkwardly, he managed to manoeuver his neck close enough to his hands to pluck the tie pin out of his collar and twist his fingers back on themselves to get to the lock on the left wrist. It was fiddly work, and not helped by the stiffness in his knuckles from punching the guy back at his apartment earlier, but Ray was nothing if not perseverant. If the goon was going back to Andersen & Shriver, then he had enough time to spend taking the Houdini option. 

 

*** 

 

In the basement, Kiki and Cash looked around in dismay. The upturned chair echoed the scene in Ray’s office earlier, but other than that, the room appeared like a perfectly normal – if rather under-used – storage space. There was certainly no angry detective currently being held captive in there.

“We’re too late… Or was he ever even here?” Kiki mused out loud, the disappointment in her tone cutting Cash to the quick.

She was right; the fact that Andersen seemed to be acting strangely and suddenly showing strangers the basement of his office didn’t necessarily connect to Ray’s disappearance. If this was a blind alley then they were back to square one with no idea where Ray might be or what had happened to him. “Damnit!” Cash felt like punching the wall. Ray would be counting on him! What next?

“Gabe, don’t lose your cool,” Kiki urged him. “Even if we’re in the wrong place now, we’re still going to find him. We just have to pick up and carry on. Keep focussed.”

He shook his head and let her words soak in. Keep focussed, back to basics, thorough police work – the kind he was usually too lazy to do himself, content to let his team handle the grunt work until they were in a position that he could saunter in with his guns and his smart mouth and wrap up the case. He pushed that little admission to one side and asked himself what Tango would be doing if he was here; detail-oriented and sharp-eyed. He channelled his partner and stared around the room again.

 _Okay, a chair in the middle of the room equals ‘holding someone captive’ 101. A chair on the ground in the middle of the room equals ‘captive being an asshole to you’ 101._ Cash smiled grimly; that was Ray all over. Then he bent to look more closely at the chair, to see if there was blood on it, and a sudden glint caught his eye. There was something shiny nestled in a crack in the concrete floor beneath it, nearly obscured by the chair leg. “Kiki!” Cash was on his knees in a second, trying to swipe up the little piece of gold. He hooked the corner of it with his nail and flipped it out of the crack, adrenalin beginning to pump as he verified that it was what he thought it was. “It’s Ray’s! I’ve given him shit for wearing this flashy crap a hundred times.”

“Yes! Then he _was_ here.” She immediately grabbed Cash under the shoulder and urged him up. “What now? Back to the guard – security tapes from the parking lot? Andersen’s address?”

“Easy, Columbo; let’s check for anything else here first,” Cash answered, but he was as excited as her to discover that they were on the right track after all. He made to pull away from her grip, but she held him still, suddenly frozen. “What?”

“Gabe,” she hissed, “listen!”

 _Oh shit._ “I hear it.” The sound of someone coming in through the heavy door to the parking garage above them, then footsteps on the stairs. Cash looked around them quickly. “We have to hide. Behind there!” He indicated towards a pile of boxes and crates in one corner of the room. There was just barely enough space to slide in between them and the wall. As long as whoever was approaching didn’t look _too_ closely, they might avoid being seen back there.

He glanced down at the cufflink in his hand. Did he drop it back down or not? Not, he decided – it might save Ray a beating if the goons who had him didn’t realise he’d been trying to leave a trail behind him. He hoped that was why the tiny scrap of gold was here, at least, rather than this being a return visit for the captors to clear up the mess they’d left behind. If that was the case, they’d just have to wonder what had happened to the jewellery in the meantime.

Kiki had squeezed in behind the crates and Cash swiftly joined her, jamming his muscular frame into the slim space with difficulty. She moved in as far as possible to try and give him more room, but he couldn’t avoid pressing her into the corner in what must have been a very uncomfortable way. “Sorry,” he whispered. Kiki shook her head minutely, and they both stilled as the footsteps reached the bottom of the stairs and the door clicked open.

Someone came in and paused, obviously scanning the room. Then they heard the chair legs scraping as it was set back on its feet and examined. _They_ are _looking for this,_ Cash thought, the cufflink pressing hot and angular into the palm of his hand. The searcher made an exasperated sound and the footsteps moved again as he walked back and stood by the door. _Taking in more of the floor… Please don’t start looking to see if it went underneath anything, like these fucking crates,_ he willed silently. The steps returned to the centre of the basement and he felt Kiki stiffen; they both held their breath. _Turn around and leave, it’s not here. We’re not here._

There was absolute silence for a few agonising moments, like the goon could tell there was something funky about the room and was trying to sense it out, and Cash began to curse himself that he’d brought Kiki here at all. If he had to fight this guy then she could wind up getting caught in the middle of it. And Ray would kill him himself if anything happened to even one hair on her head. He could feel her start to shake against his arm and he wished he could risk nudging or tapping her for reassurance, but he could only stay frozen, gripping the little golden charm so tightly in his palm that he thought the edges were going to pierce his skin. Then suddenly the goon turned on his heel with a frustrated grunt, before smartly exiting the room.

“Quick,” Cash whispered. “We have to move – to follow him to Ray!”

They slid out from behind the boxes as fast as they could without toppling them and making a noise, and once out in the open room again Cash checked his palm and found deep indents from the ridges of the cufflink. He slipped it into his pocket and shook out his hand, forcing the feeling back into his fingers. “Are you okay?” he asked Kiki.

“Yeah, it was just a little tight in there.”

“We had to get a little close…”

They looked at each other. “Let’s never mention that to Ray.”

Cash moved to the door and checked around it, before motioning her to follow him out onto the stairs, and they slipped quietly up to the stairwell just in time to see the door to the parking garage swinging shut.

“Walk out like we were just visiting a business here late,” he said. “Hopefully he won’t look closely enough to recognise we’re connected to Ray.”

They strode out and straight to Cash’s car, getting in quickly but letting the black Impala of the goon get up the ramp and turn onto the street before pulling out and following.

“That car – it could be the same one the guard was talking about. Do you think he was looking for the cufflink?” Kiki asked.

“Yeah, my guess is that whoever that was realised Ray might have dropped it on purpose to leave evidence, and came back to get rid of it. But since he didn’t see us, now he’s going to lead us straight to the source.”

 

***

 

Tango sat back on his heels and shook out his aching wrists, smugly regarding the open handcuffs laid out on the floor beside him. Then he swiped them up into his pocket and moved to the door, listening carefully once again for any noise coming from outside it before making quick work of the lock there. This shit was a lot easier with his hands free, and he was in the corridor and creeping swiftly towards the next nearest room in no time.

It was another bedroom, better furnished than the one he had just been in, and showing clear signs of being in use; there was a suitcase on the bed and a jacket hanging up over the door to what must have been the en suite bathroom. Ray opened the case and rifled through the contents. _Oh yeah, now we’re talking…_ Under a pile of shirts there was a smaller, metal case, and inside that, a Beretta and ammo. He helped himself to it, loading the gun and re-closing the main case so that at a glance it would appear undisturbed. _Okay, asshole. Now I’m armed and dangerous, and I’m going to find all the evidence I can to get to the bottom of why you grabbed me today._

 

***

 

The car was three ahead of them in the always-busy traffic, heading north, and Cash slipped the police radio out of the cradle and called in the license plate. _Let’s find out who this dickwad is, and if we’re lucky, how he’s connected to the accountancy firm._

“Gabe?”

“Yeah?”

“Why do you think they took him?”

“I don’t know, Kiki. We’ll find out for sure when we get wherever we’re going, but I wouldn’t be surprised to find out that someone’s using the accountant’s books to target the rich clients. Maybe it’s even Andersen or Shriver themselves. Serves Ray fuckin’ right for being so anal about his money.”

“Gabe.”

“Yeah, I know. Maybe not the time to joke.” He paused. “He is pretty anal, though, huh?”

“Well, you’d know that better than me,” Kiki shot back.

 _Touché_. He coughed awkwardly.

Then she bit her lip and turned to him. “Look, I know you’re cops, but seriously – why does everything have to be so crazy with you guys? There’s always something happening to you two: court cases, kidnapping, newspaper headlines, explosions you can see for ten miles around!”

“I’m sorry you got all mixed up in something with us again,” Cash answered lamely. The goon was in the process of turning across two lanes, and he had to push his way across with him. “Shit. That’s not exactly subtle, but there wasn’t really an alternative.”

“Is he onto us?” Kiki asked, anger forgotten for a moment as they tried to see if the guy was looking behind at them or speeding up.

“I don’t think so, but I’m gonna drop way back for a minute. The road’s straight now so we can see him from a distance anyway.”

Once they were at a safe distance, but in no danger of losing their quarry either, Kiki glanced over at him again, face serious.

“Gabe, Ray’s alright, isn’t he? I mean, you don’t think he could already be…”

“Nope,” Cash interrupted her firmly. “Not gonna happen. They left a message so that you would realise he was gone, right? So they aren’t just going to kill him; they want some kind of interaction with us. Information… money… who knows what, but if they’d just wanted him dead they’d have taken out a hit not a kidnap. Plus this is Ray Tango we’re talking about – he’s probably driving them crazy with his wise-ass mouth so that they wished they never grabbed him at all by now. Or he already escaped an hour ago and we’re following this guy to an empty house! And if he hasn’t, we’re on the way. Dream team, right here.”

Kiki smiled ruefully. “I don’t know about that, Gabe.”

“What do you mean?”

“There’s a dream team, but…” she cut herself off suddenly, “he’s indicating to turn!”

“I see it.” Cash made the turn after the Impala, careful to maintain a decent distance on the less busy road. They were heading up towards the canyon park, and he grabbed the radio again to chase up an ID for the driver. When the RTO confirmed the vehicle as registered to a Trent Andersen, it certainly wasn’t a shock.

“You got an address for me? Over.” Cash waited for the response, playing around with the name in his head, _Trent_ Andersen. Something about that was pinging him for some reason… As the RTO came back with an out-of-state address, it hit him. “Try running the name Brant Andersen.” That was the name he’d read off the letterhead in Tango’s keeper box earlier: it had identified the directors at the firm as Derek Shriver and _Brant_ Andersen. They swiftly got back a Canyons address in the name of Brant, and it seemed like everything was starting to fall into place. “You know what, Kiki? I’m beginning to think that we just might have ourselves a ‘Bad Brother’, ‘Worse Brother’ scenario going on here.” 

 

***

 

After searching cursorily through another couple of bedrooms – these ones apparently not in current occupation – Ray finally came upon somewhere useful: a study. He clocked the phone alongside a huge pile of files on the desk, and his first impulse was to call in to the PD and get back-up to his location ASAP.

He hastily looked for anything with an address or an inward number written on it to identify where exactly he was, his hands sweeping over the desktop and snatching up an ostentatious leather-bound checkbook. The address on the checks, combined with a glance at the first two of the files lying there, was enough to verify the connection between the Andersen & Shriver offices and his kidnapping; this was Andersen’s place, and he seemed to have a lot of sensitive account data pulled out and marked-up here, including Ray’s own portfolio.

Ray was about to dial up and call it in when he heard a door open somewhere below him, the subsequent slam echoing loud like it was an external door, or one coming into some kind of atrium space. _Fuck. Bad timing,_ he thought exasperatedly, and hurriedly slipped across the room. He positioned himself against the wall by the door, seconds before footsteps came up a nearby stairway and into the corridor. Ray gripped the Beretta, poised to move if either Andersen or the goon should come through the door into the office, but the footsteps passed the entrance and made straight towards the room he’d been cuffed in. _Here we go!_

“What the fuck?!” It was Andersen’s voice, and if he hadn’t have exclaimed so loudly, he would have been nearly drowned out by the roar of what Ray figured to be the goon’s car pulling up on the gravel drive outside again. Andersen set off back the way he’d come immediately, and Ray tensed and readied himself, just in case he was heading for the study this time. Andersen passed the doorway once more, though, and Ray heard him take the steps down and greet his accomplice with a barrage of questions as he came into the house.

Their agitated conversation faded as they went through into one of the downstairs rooms, but Ray was already putting two and two together as to what the set-up was supposed to be here. Too bad he was in the process of ruining it for them! And if Cash had been making the moves Ray hoped he was, then things were only going to get a whole lot more exciting.

 

***

 

There was no way Kiki was going to acquiesce to staying back in the car, parked a little way down Andersen’s driveway out of sight of the house, so Cash had given up trying to talk her into it. _As stubborn as Ray, and twice as persuasive._ They moved carefully towards the front door, which opened when he tried the handle, letting them into a large open hallway. Cash reflexively marked the doors coming off it, aiming swiftly at each one.

“Don’t come any further – I’m warning you!”

He stilled, head whipping around in the direction of the voice. There was an empty archway through to a lounge room, and it sounded like whoever was shouting was behind the wall there. “Andersen?” he called, settling to aim at the left edge of the arch. He was hedging his bets, but if he had to guess he’d say he was engaging Trent right now.

“You may have got Tango, but you won’t take me,” the voice came back.

Cash and Kiki exchanged confused glances. It sounded like Ray had already given his captors the slip!

“Where _is_ your partner?” Andersen continued.

 _Good question,_ Cash thought. _Right behind you, I hope._ “He went for help, Andersen. Right now he’s siccing every cop in West LA on this location.” There was silence for a moment, so Cash took another pace forward. “Who am I talking to here – the brains or the brawn?”

“Fuck you!”

 _The brawn, then._ “It looks like you lost your hostage, Trent. I figure that right about now would be a good time to give yourself up.”

“Don’t be so sure, asshole. You’re the one who should drop your weapon, or I’ll pull the trigger on baby brother here!” Trent Andersen suddenly stepped out from behind the archway, holding Brant in front of him with a gun to the temple.

“He’s bluffing – he’s not going to shoot,” Cash whispered low to Kiki. “Didn’t anyone teach you that blood’s thicker than water?” he called loudly to Trent.

“I’ll test that out when I’m washing it off my hands in a moment,” Andersen shouted back.

“Okay,” Cash whispered again. “He _might_ shoot.”

“I said put down your gun or he buys it!”

“Trent,” Brant pleaded.

“Shut up!”

“Okay, okay, I’m putting my gun down – don’t do anything you’ll regret.” Cash slowly lowered his Ruger to the ground.

“Kick it away,” Trent commanded. “Now keep your hands where I can see them, both of you.”

Cash did as he was told, eyes fixed on Trent’s trigger finger but his mind firmly on Ray’s Smith & Wesson, still hidden securely down his boot. Would he be able to get it out and get a shot off in time if Andersen dropped his brother and turned on them? Before he could calculate his chances, there was an almighty crack as a shot fired, and Cash felt Kiki flinch beside him. “Get down!” he told her urgently, quickly going for the little 36 and scrambling to sight on Trent before he could fire again. _Sick bastard really shot his own…_

 _…wait._ There was no Trent Andersen standing there anymore. It took Cash a split-second to work out what had happened, and by the time he had, Ray was already bearing down on the prone forms of both brothers, kicking the fallen weapon away from Trent’s hands and bringing out handcuffs to secure Brant.

“You shot the suspect?” Cash asked incredulously, stepping forward to peer more closely at the pool of blood slowly haloing Trent Andersen while his brother trembled on the floor beside his body.

“Well, you were too slow, buddy! We got a routine for this situation – you know that.”

“Yeah, I know that, but I wasn’t invoking it yet.”

“Cash, he was about to go fratricide-happy on the accountant here, and then he would’ve turned around and shot at Katherine and you; you had your gun on the ground – what was I gonna do, wait for my unarmed sister and lover to get blasted?” Ray demanded.

 _Lover. That one had slipped out…_ “I wasn’t unarmed.”

“But how did I know? And is that my gun; where’d you get that?”

Cash ignored the question. “We could’ve taken ‘em both.”

“I wasn’t about to gamble, Cash. You, get up!” Tango instructed Brant, roughly grabbing his cuffed arms and yanking him from the ground.

Cash reached out to take a hold of Brant, mindful of Ray’s eyes flicking worriedly back to where Kiki was hovering behind them. “Hey, I’ll take him to the car and call this in.”

Ray nodded, and as Cash walked Brant out through the open front door he could hear the relieved tone of their conversation as they embraced and reassured each other that they were fine.

“Yeah, this is Cash,” he radioed in. “Coming in with one suspect in custody; got one KMA, over.”

 

*** 

 

Hours later, when the paperwork was in the system, Brant Andersen had been questioned up, down and sideways, and Ray had finally conceded to having the knocks and cuts on various parts of his body checked out properly, Cash found himself letting them both into Ray’s apartment with the set of keys Kiki had given to the scene examiner earlier.

The lamp had been replaced upright in the hallway, and the scattered papers had been gathered and taken as evidence, so it looked almost like nothing amiss had gone on there. Cash watched Ray frown and adjust the position of the lamp and a couple of chairs, eyes obviously scanning the rooms’ contents for all the tiny misplacements and careless handling that gave away the fact the place had been crawling with police a few hours ago. 

“Little bit close to home?” he asked.

“Something like that,” Ray answered. “I wanna know how a guy as big and stupid as Trent Andersen got in and got the jump on me in my own apartment, ‘cause however that happened is on _me_.”

“Brant’ll spill everything in the end. If I get a chance at some time alone with him, then it’ll be double-quick. And ‘stupid’ is right: I can’t believe they thought that dragging your account paperwork out as though they were trying to get hold of that info was going to cast suspicion _away_ from Andersen instead of drawing our attention to him.”

Ray shrugged. “Brant’s mistake was letting his big brother talk him into extorting from his clients in the first place, and then choosing a fucking _cop_ as a mark: arrogance before intelligence. Whole thing was a fuck-up from start to finish.”

Cash held the apartment keys out to Ray. “Remember to return those to Kiki, and you should give her another call to update her that you got a medical all-clear. She was still worrying when she left the station.”

“I’ll get her another set; you keep them.” Ray waved the keys away.

“You sure?” Cash asked, hesitant at apparently having the ‘getting your own key’ milestone in their partnership come out of an incident like this.

“Yeah, if they’d called you instead of Katherine earlier, you could’ve wasted valuable time stuck outside.” He paused. “Plus it’s probably about time we did that.” It didn’t quite come out like one, but there was a discernible hint of a question layered underneath the words.

“Right, oh yeah, okay. Thanks.” Cash nearly tripped over the reply in his attempt to sound both casual and agree at the same time. “Uh, you should have this back though.” He took out the small gold cufflink he’d had nestled in his jeans pocket since coming out of the basement at the office block. “It looks better on you.”

Ray laughed and rolled his shirt sleeve down. “Put it on me.” It brought them close in to each other’s space as Cash fixed the cufflink through the crumpled white material around Ray’s wrist. “You’ve still got my spare piece as well,” Ray continued. “You picked that up at Katherine’s, right?”

Cash bit his lip and pretended to be focussed on securing the link. Ray was fishing for information about what had happened while he was gone, and the warmth and unusual openness of his proximity was making Gabe want to confess a few truths to him. He finished with the cufflink but didn’t step back, looking up to meet Ray’s gaze instead.

“When I was searching for your accountant’s details at Kiki’s she pointed me towards the box with the papers and the gun, and, um, I also accidentally saw that picture of me that you saved; it was in with all your important stuff and – after everything that’s happened tonight – I just want you to know that I… would keep a picture of you somewhere safe if I had one, too.”

“Cash,” Ray began, voice lowered for the scant distance between their faces, and just a touch amused. “What the fuck is that metaphor supposed to tell me?”

“Don’t give me that. You know what I’m…”

Tango arched his brow as he interrupted. “Do I?”

“You asshole, you’re going to make me say it?” The tiny quirk of the lip he got in response told Cash not only that his partner was supressing a smirk, but also that – yes – he was going to make him say the words. He swallowed. “I’m trying to tell you that… that I care about you as well, okay.”

“You know this isn’t some tit-for-tat, ‘you do this so I do that’, even stevens kind of thing like we had going in the past, Gabe,” Ray told him. “I didn’t shoot that shitheel Andersen in the expectation that you’d owe me anything in return; I shot him because he was about to turn that gun on you and Katherine. And I didn’t leave a photo lying around in my stuff thinking that if something happened to me and you ended up seeing it, you’d have to suddenly confirm your undying devotion to this partnership or anything.”

“Well, then you should know that I’m saying, _because I want to_ , that I’m in this partnership the same way you are; I have been for a while.”

Ray nodded. “So are we gonna call it what it is now?”

“What is it?” It was Cash’s turn to make Ray say the words.

“It’s a relationship. Not one we’re gonna broadcast on all frequencies, but it’s exclusive, and we aren’t just fucking around for fun.”

“Yeah. Although we are still doing that too,” Cash added quickly.

“Uh huh, we’re doing that plenty,” Ray told him, stepping forwards even further and snaking an arm around Cash’s waist. “You can take some more pictures to prove it, if you want.”

Cash grinned, and Ray cracked a smile in return. “What _did_ you do with those dick pics from that day?”

“I sent ‘em in to a racy magazine. You’re Miss October, 1990.”

“Is that right?”

“Congratulations.”

“It means a lot to me.”

“I thought it would.”

“Shut up, now.”

“Shut me up.”

And Cash did, smothering his lover’s mouth with a kiss. Ray made a little sound of surprise, even though he must have been expecting him to act on that challenge, and Cash took advantage of the moment to walk him back a few paces to the edge of the couch. “Sit down,” he mumbled against Ray’s lips, trying to ease them both carefully downwards until Ray was sitting on the cushions. Then Cash dropped to his knees and reached between Ray’s legs to cup his cock through the tight material of his suit pants. He was delighted to feel that Ray was already getting hot and hard, erection swelling eagerly into his hand. “There’s your Kodak moment,” he observed, flipping Ray’s belt open one-handed and yanking the zipper down to get his palm in closer.

“Wait, I want to get everything off,” Ray told him, leaning back to toe away his shoes and then press his hips up so that Cash could drag off his pants and underwear while he unbuttoned and uncuffed his shirt. “I guess we'd better take special care of these,” he said, holding up the two sets of gold cufflinks before rolling them like dice onto the side table by the couch. “Hey, you got me at a disadvantage now…”

Cash took the hint and stripped off himself, comically hopping on one leg to lose his cowboy boots, and getting his t-shirt wound up with his holster in his haste to get back to his lover’s body. Then he knelt down again and made the move they’d both been anticipating, sucking in Ray’s hard cock and eliciting a low growl of pleasure in response.

He felt Ray’s hand slide into his hair, fingers working their way steadily through it, and nearly laughed when he figured out what he was doing – systematically brushing all the gel out of it. (“Looks better like that.”) Ray kept a loose hold on the style, but slipped his other hand down to splay on the back of Cash’s neck and occasionally stroke at his skin. _Keeping me close?_ Cash wondered. The realisation that this was probably about as near as Ray would get to coming over as needy for the intimacy sent a sudden flush of arousal through his veins, and he slid a hand down to squeeze his own hard cock in time with the press and swirl of his tongue, sucking Ray and jacking himself off to the increasingly unguarded sounds of pleasure he was drawing from Ray’s lips. He didn't think either of them was going to last long…

“Gonna come,” Ray warned him, letting go of his grip on Cash’s hair just in time for him to dodge back and take the pop on his chest, the glistening white striping him down obscenely. “Fuck,” Ray gasped, breathing hard and watching as Cash scooped up some of the come and used it to slick his own cock even more, stroking himself fast and firm. “Oh yeah, come like that,” Ray urged him. “Jerk yourself off right in front of me; mix it with mine.”

Cash groaned in response. Ray’s mouth could be as dirty as it was smart, and the way he was spurring him on now, voice lower and more gravelly even than usual, was like kerosene hitting a fire. It sent his hips skittering erratically and his eyes fluttering closed as he finally lost it and shot all over his own fist and abs.

“Oh yeah,” Ray repeated, and the wonder in his tone was enough to let Cash forgive him for making him do all the work this time. “That just then was 100% _hot_.”

Being a natural show-off really paid off sometimes. Cash opened his eyes slowly and looked down ruefully at himself.

“You look good,” Ray told him. “Now, get up here on the couch with me.”

“I'd better clean up a little first; that upholstery’s probably worth more than my whole apartment.” Cash made to stand, but Ray caught his arm.

“Just use my shirt – it’s ruined anyway.”

“Kidnapping's gonna do that to a wardrobe,” Cash agreed, leaning sideways to snag up the rumpled cotton and wipe his chest and stomach with it. Then he scrambled inelegantly into the space Ray had created for him, leaning half on his side and pressing back against his partner’s firm chest.

The fact that Ray’s couch was so ostentatious and plush that they both fitted on it would normally have deserved another crack, but lying there with their legs tangled together and their clothes discarded haphazardly around them, Cash could feel how relaxed and unwound Ray had gotten, and it was a spell he didn’t want to break yet. Maybe neither of them would admit it out loud, but a lot of serious shit had happened in a short space of time, and having a moment where they were both calm, and _together_ , fingers resting idly on each other’s skin, was more welcome than another punchline.

… Just for a moment.

“Hey,” Cash murmured. “It’s a good job we _have_ still got Kiki’s key ourselves. If she let herself in right now, we might have some explaining to do.”

“How come you weren’t so concerned about that when I walked in on you two ‘doing a back massage’?” Ray asked.

“Because we were actually doing a back massage. Okay… and I didn’t know you had a set of keys.”

Ray laughed, the fingers of the hand he had on Cash’s thigh squeezing a little, warm and calloused. “But being serious, my sister’s not that naïve, either, Gabe. She knows what the score is with me and who I like to get close to, and she’s been around us both too much not to have put two and two together that there’s something more than working going on in our partnership.”

Cash nodded. “Yeah, I know. So really, it’s only the steady stream of assailants and kidnappers who seem to find their way into your apartment who are gonna stumble on us naked and be surprised, then.”

“That’s right,” Ray agreed. “And the surprising part isn’t going to be that two naked guys are here together, it’s gonna be that two naked guys are kicking their fucking asses.”

Cash grinned. “Dream team.”

“Tango and Cash: naked, ass-kicking dream team, all the way.”

  


_-end._  



End file.
